On Nov 14, 2012, at 20:59, Dave Crocker <dhc@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 11/14/2012 9:34 AM, Carsten Bormann wrote: >> (Another aspect beyond capturing regular attendees, of course, is >> gaining local mindshare and relevance. > > I believe I understand the concepts that are meant by such language. But I do not know what you mean, with respect to the IETF. I especially do not know what you mean, in terms of the IETF's getting its work done. My comment was not about getting work done, but about impact of this work. > Ultimately, if the IETF does not have the mindshare among the people who consume our work, I believe that it is better accomplished by doing work that has more community involvement and more operational relevance. Sure. > If we do that, it won't matter where we hold our meetings. And I was pointing out that this isn't true. It may not matter nearly as much as the quality of the work, but there is an effect. Increasing visibility and mindshare, in particular at level 9, can very much help enabling involvement. > One argument for our going to many different places is that it makes the IETF more 'credible' because the IETF is "seen". However I believe few International standards groups do traveling shows like the IETF, and they manage to be seen as credible. > > In other words, I would have that our relevance is determined more by the quality and utility of our work than by the marketing effects of meeting venue. I certainly subscribe to that. I believe the IETF has pretty much struck the right notes here in the most recent years. (And I know about the contingencies that made us fall back to having two US meetings in a row right now, and I hope that those won't recur. I was part of the 85 % for which it was quite pleasant to fall back to Atlanta, BTW, and I hope this venue can become our second Minneapolis. If fallbacks do occur frequently, we may have to make plans for more non-US meetings so that with the inevitable fallbacks we return to the right mix.) > Again, finding meeting venues that work well for an IETF venue is quite difficult. When we add other goals, such as marketing the IETF to the community, we make venue selection especially difficult. Again, you are trying to argue against my point by saying your point is more important. That is certainly so, but doesn't make my point wrong or irrelevant. Practically speaking, e.g., if we can get a reasonable venue in Brazil or in a Spanish-speaking country, we should go there. That's a big if, but I would argue that it is worth investing some (limited amount of) effort trying to find it. Grüße, Carsten